Life Cykel Review

Life Cykel suffers from the same fundamental issue as most mushroom tinctures: they can’t deliver high enough doses of active compounds to be effective. And whilst the branding is nice and the formulations include both mushroom mycelia and fruiting bodies, that isn’t going to save Life Cykel.

First of all, we have the issue that a dose is 2ml. The problem is that this means each dose of Life Cykel is going to contain about 200mg mushroom powder. We have the math worked out on our site if you’re interested to take a look, link in the description, but in short any more of this and you’d have a mushroom sludge, not tincture.  

That means that we’re ruling out having enough beta glucans to start with, you need more than double for the low end dose. And although, beta glucans aren’t always the be all and end all of a mushroom supplement, they are the only compound in certain mushrooms, like lion’s mane, that won’t break down in tinctures with 20% alcohol, and Life Cykel falls into that category.

So, I’m sure you can see the problem here. So, we have the limited dose meaning we can’t get some of the core ingredients, but other functional compounds like erinacines, the compound that gives lion’s mane it’s brain boosting effects, aren’t even stable in the tincture format.

If you’d like to look at mushroom supplements which do actually have functional doses, we have an article breaking those down here, and if you want our top pick, it’s Nootrum, who actually standardize for the micro compounds to match the doses used in trials.

Now, we’ve established that Life Cykel Lion’s Mane isn’t viable, but what about the other Life Cykel Mushroom tinctures?

Life Cykel Cordyceps 

Life Cycle Cordyceps+ performs slightly better than Lion’s Mane+, in that cordycepin can survive in the tincture at least. And that’s the compound that gives cordyceps its energy boosting effects. The downside is that the serving provides just 200 milligrams of mushroom powder equivalent, which is far too low to deliver meaningful levels of cordycepin without standardization. You’d need a couple of grams unless you do this and that isn’t present in Life Cykel.

Life Cykel Reishi+

And as for Life Cykel Reishi+, this is actually a bit disappointing, as triterpenoids, the unique compound in Reishi , but you need about 150mg of these, and once again without standardization this is simply not going fit in Life Cykel.

Breaking Down the Life Cykel Formula

We're going to use the lion's mane example here, but the alc volume and water is the same in all of the tinctures.

1. Ingredients:

   • The tincture ingredients are listed as: filtered water, alcohol (20–24% v/v), mushroom extract (mycelia & fruit body), Kakadu Plum, and natural flavor.
   • Ingredients are listed in descending order of their weight or volume in the formula, meaning water is the dominant ingredient, followed by alcohol, and then the mushroom extract.

2. Alcohol Content:

   • With alcohol making up 20–24% of the tincture, we can reasonably assume that water accounts for 50–60% of the remaining volume.
   • This leaves only 20–30% of the tincture for everything else, including the mushroom extract, Kakadu Plum, and flavorings.

3. Mushroom Content Estimate:

   • Given that Kakadu Plum and natural flavor are likely present in very small amounts (probably less than 5%), the mushroom extract likely makes up around 15–25% of the tincture.
   • For a 2-milliliter serving, this translates to 0.3–0.5 mL of mushroom extract per dose.
   • If the mushroom extract is prepared as a 1:10 ratio tincture (a common extraction ratio), where 1 part mushrooms is diluted into 10 parts solvent, the actual mushroom powder equivalent per serving would be 200–250 milligrams. And realistically this is about the most you can do without it being gritty, due to solubility limitations of mushrooms, but the math there get's a bit heavy.

Life Cykel Value

As for cost Life Cykel comes in at $34.95 for a 60-milliliter bottle. With a 2-milliliter serving size, this equates to a 30-day supply. Compared to standardized mushroom extracts in capsules or powders, the price is high for what amounts to minimal therapeutic value. If you consider you can get 2 grams of standardized mushroom extracts for the same price with Nootrum, vs 200mg of functional ingredients in Life Cykel, we clearly recommend the capsule option.

Life Cykel Customer Reviews

Online reviews for Life Cykel products are mixed with positive reviews mention subjective benefits like improved sleep or focus, but these may be placebo effects given the low active doses. And the negative reviews often point out the lack of noticeable effects as we’d expect, reinforcing the dosing issues.

Final Thoughts On Life Cykel

To reiterate the issues with life cykel for general health benefits, you’d need 1–3 grams of mushroom extract daily. If you’re after immune support, beta-glucans are the key compound, and you’d need about 500–1,000 milligrams of beta-glucans alone. For specific bioactive compounds like erinacines (in Lion’s Mane) or cordycepin (in Cordyceps), you’re looking at even higher doses. At just 200 milligrams per serving, Life Cykel’s tinctures fall way short.

You can get around this with standardized extracts but, this isn’t the case here. So, without standardization, there’s no way you’re going to get enough of the active compounds—like beta-glucans, erinacines, or cordycepin—you’re actually getting. Without this consistency, you’d need to take multiple grams of the tincture just to hope you’re hitting effective doses, and let’s face it, that’s not happening with a 2-milliliter serving.

So, to wrap up, even though Life Cykel tinctures appear high-quality due to their use of both mycelia and fruiting body extracts, they fall short where it matters most: delivering sufficient doses of active compounds.